A Life Worth Living
by roslinadama-sinequanon
Summary: This is my idea of a better ending for Conspiracy Theory, one in which Sharon Raydor DOES NOT DIE. It's based on "It's a Wonderful Life". Starts off angsty but you'll like the ending.


"Wait," Emily grabbed Ricky's wrist, stopping him just as he was about to knock on the door of their father's apartment. Unlike their mother's condominium, they would never think of just entering as if it were their home, even if they had had a key. Nothing about Jack Raydor had ever spoken of home.

"What's the matter?" Ricky paused and looked down into his sister's worried eyes. "You look nervous."

"Of course I'm nervous. I don't know how you can be so calm. Dad is not going to take this well. He hasn't even gotten over Andy moving in with Mom yet, every time I talk to him it's like all he can focus on. In his own warped way, I think he still loves her."

"Well, she doesn't still love him."

"Ricky…" She pleaded for understanding, but Ricky no longer had it in him.

"I'm sorry, Em. I don't feel sorry for him. Mom gave him dozens of chances to get his life together and he fucked it up every time. He's the one who went away and stayed away for years as if we didn't even exist."

"I know that and I know she doesn't love him anymore and that she deserves so much better—and that she'll get that with Andy. That doesn't mean…well…I just don't want him to start drinking again."

"Do you honestly think he stopped?"

Emily turned away. She would love to contradict him but she was the one who had come face to face with the damning evidence. Two years ago at Christmas when she'd been forced to stay at Jack's because there wasn't enough room at her mother's condo for everyone she had found several empty bottles of booze in his trash and brought it to her two brother's attention. The plan to hide it from their unsuspecting mother later backfired when Jack turned up drunk at her condo, eliciting an 'I told you so' from Rusty who had been the only one against the plan to keep it from their mom. Since then she'd had a few phone calls from Jack when she was sure he was three sheets to the wind, most of those calls taking place after Andy moved in with her mother. Still, she always hoped.

"Look," Ricky turned her back to face him, his voice softer. "I know it's hard but we can't take responsibility for how Dad handles the things that upset him in his life. Yeah, he's going to be pissed, but we have to do this…for Mom. It's up to him how he handles it."

"I know." His raised skeptical eyebrow at her softly spoken response caused her to stiffen her resolve. "I do know, Ricky, I really do." Al-Anon meetings and the family counseling she'd attended with her mother and brother had taught her that they weren't responsible for their father's actions, but that didn't make it any easier. She nodded toward the door taking a deep breath. "Go ahead."

Ricky steeled his shoulders and knocked. Despite his calm façade, he too knew they were in for a confrontation.

"Well, well, well, my prodigal children." Jack opened the door to let the two of them into his apartment with a sweeping theatrical gesture.

"Hey Dad, Merry Christmas." Emily stepped up to kiss his cheek. Why was it that something as simple as that was still awkward?

When Ricky didn't follow suit with a hug, Jack held a hand out to him. "Merry Christmas, son."

Ricky nodded and shook his hand trying to swallow his bitterness and not to think of all the Christmas's his father had missed.

"So," Jack led them into the small bare living room. "How was your big New England family Christmas?" Poison fairly oozed from his pores.

Emily ignored his sarcasm and answered as if the question had been genuine. "It was great, we had a wonderful time."

"Your grandparents are still well?"

"Very well."

"And your mother and her _boyfriend_?" The siblings exchanged an apprehensive look. As expected, Jack was not going to make this easy.

"That's what we came to talk to you about."

"Did your mother finally come to her senses and kick Andy to the curb?" Jack's grin was damn near gleeful.

"Not exactly."

"They're getting married," Ricky stated it bluntly, taking an almost perverse pleasure in knocking the shit-eating grin off his father's face. His whole life, he'd tried to understand Jack, tried to figure out what made him tick, but now he knew he never would. Jack was the one who had walked away from their family, leaving his mother in a pile of debt to raise two children on her own, yet she had done nothing but try to help him each time he had come crawling back and this was the way he repaid her? By taking pleasure in the thought that a relationship meaning so much to her had ended? It made him sick to his stomach.

His arrogance deflated, Jack looked confused, almost lost, the overwhelming pain in his chest limiting comprehension. "What did you just say." He'd heard what Ricky had said loud and clear, he just couldn't believe it

"Andy asked Mom to marry him and she said yes," Emily answered.

Jack leaned back in his chair still looking like he had taken a kick to the solar plexus. His wife was getting married…To Andy Flynn. This is exactly what he'd been afraid of when Sharon asked for a divorce. It took a few moments but once the initial shock wore off his mind began scrambling, trying to find a way out of this. That's when the grin came back. "She's not going to marry Andy. She can divorce me and still receive the sacraments, but she can't remarry in the church, and if she remarries outside the church, she can say bye-bye to receiving Holy Communion. I know your mother. She won't do that."

"She will," Emily's voice was barely louder than a whisper. "You don't know her as well as you think you do. She's marrying Andy, Dad, whatever the consequences. She's wearing his engagement ring. This is real."

Jack stared at his daughter in disbelief. Was Sharon really so deeply in love with that skirt-chaser Flynn that she would actually turn her back on the church? Prickles of panic crawled along his skin, his stomach knotting in agony. It was the same way he had felt when Sharon pushed divorce papers at him. And just as it happened then, when he was at a loss and couldn't find a way to fight back, his eyes narrowed, his face tightened, and he got mean.

"I suppose you two are happy about this," he accused.

Emily shrank back from the venomous words, but Ricky did not. "Yes. We're very happy, thank you for asking. We both like Andy a lot. He's good for Mom and he really loves her. He makes her laugh. In my whole life, I've never seen her the way she is when they're together. She deserves to be loved and she deserves to be happy."

"But you were right about the church," Emily said quickly before Jack could argue that point. "She's going to marry Andy no matter what, but she really wants to marry him in the church."

"Which brings us to why we are here." Ricky handed Jack a folder.

Jack grabbed his reading glasses and opened it. "An annulment!" He exploded. "Are you two out of your god- damned minds?"

Emily flinched causing Ricky to set a firm hand on his father's arm in warning. "Hey, Dad, watch it." Jack angrily shrugged it off.

"Did your mother put you up to this?"

"Do you even _know_ Mom?" Ricky shook his head in disbelief. "She doesn't like anyone fighting her battles for her, in fact, she's probably going to be pissed when she finds out we did this, but we knew you'd say no to her."

"Damn right I would. Do you even know what an annulment means? It erases the whole marriage as if it never happened. Like we were never really married."

"Well, you weren't really married, were you? I mean Mom was married to you, but were you ever really married to her?"

"Oh don't give me that shit, Ricky. And let me ask you, do you both really want to be bastards? Did you think about that?"

"Having a marriage annulled does not make us bastards and right now, you're the one being a bastard."

"What do you know about it anyway?" Jack glared at his son. "It was my marriage."

"And we lived it too, Dad. We were there. We know plenty. Probably a lot more than you or even Mom think we know."

"Dad you _owe_ her." Emily's outburst and the tears shining in her eyes caused both men to pause in their argument. "Ricky's right, you were never really married to her and you were never part of our family. You walked away and left Mom to take care of us all alone. And she did it. You sit here and try to make us feel guilty for spending Christmas with Mom and Andy but how many Christmas's did you bother to come home and see us? I can count them on one hand."

"Your mother kept me away. I wasn't allowed to come back and see you."

"That's not true. The only thing Mom ever told you about staying away was that you were not to come around if you'd been drinking."

"You don't know."

"I _do_ know, Dad. I _heard_ her. I heard her begging you to come home to spend time with us, for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, for our birthdays. _'They're your kids Jack; they need to see their father. I'm not asking you to do this for me, I'm asking for them. Please.'_ I heard her doing anything she could to convince you to come home and take me to the father/daughter dance at St. Joseph's, she even offered to pay for your plane tickets. Do you remember?"

Jack's eyes fell to the floor, but his silence compelled Emily on. "I was 10 years old and I hadn't seen you in three years. When Mom finally reached you and convinced you to come home, she put me on the phone with you. You promised me you'd be there. You said you couldn't wait to show me off and dance with the best little ballerina in America." When Emily's voice choked with emotion, Ricky rested a gentle hand on her arm for support earning him a look of gratitude. "I was so excited and so nervous. Mom and I had gone shopping and I put on the new dress and new shoes that she had bought for me. She spent a half hour curling my hair so it would be just the way I wanted it. Then we waited and waited and waited and you never showed up." Angrily she brushed at the tear that trailed down her cheek. "Thankfully Mom knew you better than I did, she had Gavin ready as a backup and he took me." The memory was still so vivid, her mother's flamboyant best friend showing up in his tuxedo with a bouquet of roses for her. He'd done his best to make it a special night. He'd made her laugh as only Gavin could, but he was not her father.

At Jack's continued lack of response, Ricky jumped in. "And remember that time I fell out of the tree and broke my arm and had a concussion? I was unconscious and had to have emergency surgery to remove the pressure on my brain from the swelling." Ricky's hand moved to his head feeling for the scar under his hairline as if he had to prove it.

"Mom was out of her mind." Emily's stomach twisted at the memory of her mother kneeling in a pew in the hospital chapel wiping at her tears and praying the decades of the rosary the entire time Ricky was in surgery. "She was so scared."

"I could have died or had brain damage. But did you care? Were you there? When I woke up from surgery Mom was sleeping in a chair by my bed holding my hand." Looking exhausted and wrung out in a way he had never seen her before, hair mussed and dark circles under eyes swollen from crying. "She'd been there all night. She never left my side. But you were nowhere to be found."

At least now, Jack had the decency to look chagrined. "When I got your mother's messages, I did call to see if you were okay."

"Oh, you called. Well, that's okay then. Let's give you a "father of the year" award."

"Look, Ricky, I am well aware that I am not a good parent. I don't need either of you to remind me about that."

"Obviously you do. Do you know what it was like as an 11-year-old boy to have to have my mother help me to the bathroom to pee because I was too dizzy to stand on my own? To have my mother give me the facts of life talk, trying not to die of embarrassment while she explained masturbation and erections and how to use a condom? Seriously, what boy wants to learn about wet dreams from his mother?" He could still see his mom sitting on the couch armed with pamphlets and a book, trying to be so cool and matter of fact, while the pink stain flushing her cheeks and her sometimes-halting explanations gave her away. She was as embarrassed as he was. "I'm sure it wasn't fun for her to have to be explaining all the things my father should have been teaching me but she did it because it had to be done and because you forced her to be both our mother and our father. We have never asked you for a damn thing until now." Ricky's finger pointed angrily in his father's face. "You owe us and you sure as hell owe her. But, if you can't see that, you can just live the rest of your life completely on your own. Emily and I are done." He sat back, arms folded over his chest.

"What are you talking about, you're done?" Fear, icy and cold snaked its way up Jack's spine. With Sharon out his life, Ricky and Emily were all that he had.

"You were never there for us when we were kids and the time that we needed you is long gone." Jack's mouth went slack, his fingers digging painfully into the chair. The apple certainly didn't fall far from the tree. Sharon had said almost the exact same thing when she asked him for a divorce. "Why should we be here for you now? You say you want some kind of relationship with us, well, sign the papers. If you don't, you won't be seeing us anymore."

"You can't be serious. Emily?" Jack turned his attention to his tenderhearted daughter sure she would cave. Only, she didn't. Not this time.

"He's right, Dad. You owe her. My God, she changed her whole career trajectory and took a job she didn't want because she was a single parent and needed to be there for us."

"She got a higher rank and more money," Jack snorted derisively.

"Yes, she did. And she needed it since you took off with her savings." Taking the job in IA had been a practical decision, one her mother would later deem a lifesaver, but in the beginning, she hadn't wanted the job and for a long time she didn't like the job. She never complained about her new position or the toll it was taking on her in front of her and Ricky but one night Emily had heard her crying to Gavin about how awful it was, how all her friends in the department hated her now and wouldn't talk to her. It had taken her years to develop the tough shell she needed to survive in such a thankless position.

"Yes, she did it for the money but she also did it so she could have regular hours and be there for us when we needed her. And she was. She was the one who took care of us when we were sick or had our hearts broken. She's the one who was there to cheer us on when we won and to comfort us when we lost. She's the one who cooked for us, shopped for us and helped us with our homework. She's the one who went to PTA meetings and Open House at school to meet our teachers. She's the one who was in the crowd cheering for us when we graduated and who sacrificed to get me through NYU and Ricky through Stanford. She's the one Dad. The only one who has been there for us every day of our lives from the moment we were born. This is her time now to get what she wants and if you don't give her the opportunity to have the wedding and the marriage that she wants, then you will never see me again."

When Jack simply sat back, Ricky stressed the point. " _Never_ Dad. That means you don't see us get married and you don't get to meet your grandchildren. Andy Flynn will be the only grandfather they will know."

It was that remark that caused Jack to jerk to attention. Out of everything they had said to him it was the comment about Andy that finally penetrated the fog of anger and shame. Ever since the divorce, he had felt like he was walking a tightrope without a net. Before the divorce and before his wife had started shacking up with Flynn he'd always known that no matter how badly he screwed up, he could go back to Sharon and she would help him. A part of him even believed that one day he might be able to win her back. Then Andy had come along and she had divorced him, making it quite clear that her door was locked to him and he was no longer her responsibility. There would be no more bailouts, no more money lent, no more couches to sleep on. Even if he had tried to wheedle himself back into her good graces, Andy was not going to allow him to take advantage of her anymore. This new hands-off approach included his relationship with their children. In the past Sharon had always been their buffer, first convincing him to be a part of their lives and later convincing them to be part of his. She was the one who had blackmailed him into reconnecting with the kids after a 5-year absence from their lives, but she had also made it quite clear that moving forward they were now all adults and, as such, would be responsible for whatever kind of relationship they chose to have. Switzerland was what she said. From now on, she was Switzerland. So, for the first time in his life, he was completely on his own, without back up, and he wasn't handling it well at all. His drinking was growing increasingly out of control again, though he tried to hide it, and now his years of abusing his body were starting to affect his health. He wasn't getting any younger and at his last physical, his doctor hadn't pulled any punches. His blood pressure was high, he was pre-diabetic and thanks to a lifetime of alcoholism he was suffering from ARLD, otherwise known as Alcohol-Related Liver Disease. If he didn't stop drinking, he could soon find himself in liver failure. There would be a time, maybe not so long in the future, when he was going to need those kids.

And as far as Andy Flynn went? Well, he might be the man who had stolen his wife, the one who was fucking her and buying a house with her, the one who was going to marry her and grow old with her, but he'd be damned if he was going to allow him to be his grandchildren's only grandfather.

"What's it gonna be, Dad?"

"Give me the damn papers."

TBC


End file.
